Perhaps, Jurgis thought, this was intended to signify that it was his baby; that it was his and Ona’s, to care for all its life. Jurgis had never possessed anything nearly so interesting⁠—a baby was, when you came to think about it, assuredly a marvellous possession. It would grow up to be a man, a human soul, with a personality all its own, a will of its own! Such thoughts would keep haunting Jurgis, filling him with all sorts of strange and almost painful excitements. He was wonderfully proud of little Antanas; he was curious about all the details of him⁠—the washing and the dressing and the eating and the sleeping of him, and asked all sorts of absurd questions. It took him quite a while to get over his alarm at the incredible shortness of the little creature’s legs.